Orange or Tawny Hawkweed; Golden Mouse-ear Hawkweed; Devil’s Paint-brush
Hieracium aurantiacum
Flower-heads–Reddish orange; 1 in. across or less, the 5-toothed rays overlapping in several series; several heads on short peduncles in a terminal cluster. Stem: Usually leafless, or with 1 to 2 small sessile leaves; 6 to 20 in. high, slender, hairy, from a tuft of hairy, spatulate, or oblong leaves at the base.
Preferred Habitat–Fields, woods, roadsides, dry places.
Flowering Season–June-September.
Distribution–Pennsylvania and Middle states northward into British Possessions.
A popular title in England, from whence the plant originally came, is Grimm the Collier. All the plants in this genus take their name from hierax–a hawk, because people in the old country once thought that birds of prey swooped earthward to sharpen their eyesight with leaves of the hawkweed, hawkbit, or speerhawk, as they are variously called. Transplanted into the garden, the orange hawkweed forms a spreading mass of unusual, splendid color.
The Rattlesnake-weed, Early or Vein-leaf Hawkweed, Snake or Poor Robin’s Plantain (H. venosum), with flower-heads only about half an inch across, sends up a smooth, slender stem, paniculately branched above, to display the numerous dandelion-yellow disks as early as May, although October is not too late to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing shake bites as those of the Rattlesnake Plantain. When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake’s body; therefore, by simple reasoning, they must extract venom. How delightful is faith cure!
